Requiem in the Venetian Manner

CHAN 0637 Front.qxd 20/7/07 2:38 pm Page 1 Chan 0637 Benedetto CHACONNE Marcello premiere recording Requiem in the Venetian Manner Filippo Maria Bressan Athestis Chorus Academia de li Musici CHANDOS early music Filippo Maria Bressan CHAN 0637 BOOK.qxd 20/7/07 2:44 pm Page 2 Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739) Requiem, SF. B660* “cantato secondo l’usanza Venetiana”, (Requiem ‘in the Venetian Manner’) 1 Campane da morto (‘Death Bell’) – 0:26 2 Sonata for organ, SF. C737 b. 1† – 5:04 in G minor . g-Moll . sol mineur Francesco Moi organ Introitus 17:16 3 Requiem aeternam – 4:29 4 Kyrie I and II – 4:18 5 Christe – 2:50 6 Kyrie III – 5:38 Sequentia 21:14 Biblioteca della Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia, Venice Stampalia, Scientifica Querini della Fondazione Biblioteca 7 Dies irae – 1:25 8 Quantus tremor – 0:39 9 Tuba mirum – 1:12 Benedetto Marcello 10 Engraving by Giuseppe Dala Mors stupebit – 1:52 11 Liber scriptus – 2:46 12 Rex tremendae – 1:00 13 Recordare – 3:16 14 Qui Mariam – 0:45 15 Preces meae – 1:16 3 CHAN 0637 BOOK.qxd 20/7/07 2:44 pm Page 4 16 Inter oves – 0:51 Marisa Pugina soprano 17 Confutatis – 0:55 Barbara Zanichelli soprano 18 Ora supplex – 1:38 Elena Biscuola alto 19 Lacrymosa – 3:40 Paolo Costa alto Mauro Collina tenor 20 Offertorium 5:42 Vincenzo Di Donato tenor Domine Jesu Christe Marco Scavazza bass Walter Testolin bass 21 Sonata for organ, SF. C736 b. 3‡ 3:05 Athestis Chorus [in loco Sanctus] Academia de li Musici in G minor . g-Moll . sol mineur Filippo Maria Bressan Francesco Moi organ * Critical edition after sources in London (GB – Lbl R.M. 24 c. l) and Berlin Motet: ‘Dulcis Jesu Mater cara’, SF. B637§ 8:09 (D – brd – B Mus ms 13531) by Alessandro Borin [in loco Agnus Dei] † Bologna, Museo Bibliografico Musicale (I – BC MS GG 149, c. lr) edited by Alessandro Borin 22 Dulcis Jesu, Mater cara – 3:00 ‡ Bologna, Museo Bibliografico Musicale (I – Bc MS GG 145, n. 7, c. 139r) 23 In stellarum Regina – 1:08 edited by Alessandro Borin 24 In isto mundo labili 4:00 § Assisi, Biblioteca della Basilica di san Francesco (I – Af MSS N. 185/2) edited by Alessandro Borin [Communio] 2:16 25 Lux aeterna 0:35 The first performance in modern times of Marcello’s Requiem took place on 26 Requiem aeternam 1:40 12 September 1996 at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice during the TT 63:15 international baroque music festival Feste Musicali per San Rocco. 4 5 CHAN 0637 BOOK.qxd 20/7/07 2:44 pm Page 6 Athestis Chorus Academia de li Musici Sopranos Tenors oboe Marco Cera T. Hasegawa, Utrecht 1993, after J.C. Denner 1720 Monica Furlani Nicola Bellinazzo Stefano Vezzani T. Hasegawa, Utrecht 1991, after J.C. Denner 1720 Annalisa Osti Carlo Mattiazzo bassoon Paolo Tognon O. Cottet, Versailles 1995, after T. Prudent ca. 1760 Giulia Quaini Massimiliano Pascucci horn Gabriele Rocchetti A. Yung Wirt, Vienna 1994 after L. Ehe 1703 Maricla Rossi violin solos Carla Marotta J. Tihr, Vienna 1786 Cecilia Varotto Basses Claudia Combs S. Klotz, Mittenwald, Tyrol 1746 Johnny Asolari Giovanni Dalla Vecchia F. Simeoni, Treviso 1995, after P. Guarneri Altos Davide Benetti violin Maria Paola Cavallini T. Carcassi, Florence 1745 Rossella Bottacin Lino Fortuna Angela Nardo D. Quercetani, Parma 1996, after Stradivarius Francesca Da Ros Luca Romani Eleonora Poletti Anon., Italy 18th century Paolo Seno Riccardo Vartolo B. Stefanini, Italy 1996, after Stradivarius viola solos Gianni Maraldi P. Pallotta, Italy 1798 viola Mauro Righini E. Gorr, Cremona 1998, after Stradivarius Fabrizio Merlini E. Marchetti, Italy 1912, after Stradivarius cello solos Francesco Ferrarini J. Starzel, Germany 1730 cello Maria Roberta Dell’Orco R. Mihaly, Budapest 1890, after Stradivarius double bass Paolo Zuccheri Anon., Italy late-18th century theorbo Diego Cantalupi S. Salari, Milan 1996, after Tiffenbrucker harpsichord Roberto Loreggian F. Gazzola, Italy 1990 after a 17th-century Italian model organ Francesco Moi (continuo) L. Patella, Italy 1998, after 18th-century German Truheorgel (sonatas) Giovanni Tonoli, 1861 with parts built by Luigi Montesanti (1799–1806), restored by Paolo Tollari 1997 – Poggio Rusco Francesco Moi 6 7 CHAN 0637 BOOK.qxd 20/7/07 2:44 pm Page 8 in the private societies known as accademie. contact with the organist of the Santi Marcello: Requiem Unfortunately we do not know when, Apostoli and the parish church of Santa Sofia, where, nor for what specific occasion two Venetian churches only a stone’s throw Marcello composed his fine Requiem for from Palazzo Marcello. Sacchi tells us that Benedetto Marcello’s place in the history of masterly attention to the words of the texts he soloists, two choirs, strings and continuo. A The composer donated these last works to the Venetian music is not easily defined. Born set, the noble simplicity of his melodies. biography of Marcello written in the late- Church of Santa Sofia,… where they were into an old patrician family, he described For the past few decades, however, all eighteenth century by a great admirer of the performed many times; but then the himself in his youth as an ‘amateur these considerations seem to have faded into composer, Giovenale Sacchi, only tells us that manuscripts fell into the hands of someone contrapuntist’. Throughout his life he held a the background so completely that Marcello’s Marcello also set other sacred Latin texts:… the who, placing a higher value upon money than variety of important posts in judicial and place in the history of music appears to rest Miserere Psalm… and three Masses, one upon good music, sold them to an Englishman administrative departments of the Venetian primarily upon his famous satirical pamphlet, accompanied by violins, the other two only by who knew their worth, and thus they are no Republic, becoming a member of the Il teatro alla moda, about the evils of the basses and organ. longer to be found in Venice. Council of Forty, then Provveditore of Pola contemporary theatre. Even his great work, We cannot exclude the possibility that this This explains why the manuscript of the and finally Camerlengo at Brescia, where he Estro poetico-armonico (1724–6), comprising Mass ‘accompanied by violins’ was in reality Requiem is now in the archives of the British died in 1739. settings of the first fifty Psalms paraphrased the Requiem in G minor. Sacchi implies that Library in London. It is greatly to be hoped Today, when we think of Venetian music in in Italian, has been somewhat neglected. these settings belong to Marcello’s final that this work, one of those that best reveal the first half of the eighteenth century, we The current marginalisation of Marcello creative period, when the composer was the originality and artistic strength of think immediately of Vivaldi, a priest but by writers on music history, compilers of obsessed with ‘self-canonisation’. The most Marcello, may spark off a modern primarily a professional musician. The concert programmes and by record plausible dating places it between 1728 and renaissance for Benedetto Marcello. rediscovery, and ever-expanding popularity of companies, is possibly the result of his 1733, years in which the composer, having Vivaldi, which has been a phenomenon of the unusual relationship with the major Venetian achieved a high degree of technical © 1999 Marco Bizzarini twentieth century, has all but eclipsed the musical institutions. His music was never competence and an intense religious reputation of Marcello; yet the latter enjoyed played in St Mark’s, in the hospitals or the awareness, was devoting himself to his final Benedetto Marcello’s boredom, silence and the esteem of Bach, Telemann, Locatelli, theatres of his native city, but only in the musical utterances. Similarities between parts Requiem Avison and Goethe, and later that of great houses and the salons of the aristocracy. of the Requiem and the final chorus of his Boredom and sense of duty: two sides of the Cherubini, Rossini and Verdi. Once, the An interesting exception to this is his oratorio Joaz (1727) would appear to support character of Benedetto Marcello… ‘Nobile Veneto’, the ‘Venetian Aristocrat’, was setting of sacred Latin texts. From its this theory also from a stylistic point of view. considered one of the musical glories of Italy specifically liturgical nature, it is obvious that These were the last years Marcello spent in ‘Boredom… is, for man, the greatest of all ills.’ on a par with Palestrina and Pergolesi. He was this music was intended for use in church, his native city. (J.B.Dubos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie, admired for his skilful counterpoint, his and certainly not in domestic situations nor We also know that the composer was in Paris, 1719) 8 9 CHAN 0637 BOOK.qxd 20/7/07 2:44 pm Page 10 Giovanni Morelli, the nineteenth-century ‘restless nights and busy days’ and which led silence – not the silence of physical death, consciousness of salvation freely bestowed Venetian art historian, wrote that paradoxically in Marcello’s case to a passivity but that of a renunciation of music and the (‘Qui salvandos salvas gratis, salva me, fons Among the many ways in which the spirit of that coincided, fatally, with silence. diligence that had previously characterised pietatis’). the eighteenth century might be encapsulated, his busy working life. Inevitably, the work When all is said and done, the fascinating that of Dubos, who wrote of it as the century …and his Silence assumes the symbolic significance of a beauty of such masterly devices cannot help that found its pleasure in the energetic valediction, looking back upon and summing but create a sense of frustration at the lack of performance of duty and in trivial pastimes, is Ma quante, quante ancor note… up his entire existence.

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